Behind The Scenes #1

Behind The Scenes: Carols by Candlelight 2012. Neil McMahon and Paul Jeffers go behind the scenes to see what's involved with producing Carols by Candlelight for Christmas Eve in Melbourne this year. We speak with some star performers for this year's event, candlemakers and production crews to give you a peek at what's involved. Photo: Simon Schluter

IT'S about Jesus, officially, and Santa and his sack, if we're honest. But there's more to Carols by Candlelight than those twin ambassadors for the season. One must not forget Humphrey B. Bear.

How could we? He's a TV legend - voiceless and pantsless, and in recent years often jobless as well, even absent from one of his once annual star turns - sharing the stage at the Sidney Myer Music Bowl every Christmas Eve.

Gone, but not forgotten.

When Carols organisers held their final major planning meeting last week, there was much to discuss. Security threats. The weather. Traffic. Fire danger - think about 10,000 naked flames in a park on a total fire ban day. Listening in, you could join the dots in your head and conjure alarming scenarios.

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They range from the diabolical - what if, say, Denis Walter is struck by lightning? And is a concert built around Christianity's holiest day a terrorist target? What time are the limos coming? Have we got enough water bottles?

Frightening stuff, fiddly stuff, and then things get serious.

''Is Humphrey definitely out?'' someone asks.

The reply: ''Humphrey's going to do what he did last year.''

Translation: he's on hand to say hello to the crowd, but only in the ad breaks - no screen time from Nine.

Such is the detail stored in the organisational memory of Carols veterans, who have one of the strangest briefs in showbusiness. It happens once a year, the telecast can never be usefully repeated except the next morning, the song list almost never

changes, and the cast is familiar. Many in the audience will fall asleep 10 minutes in. And it's rich in curious Carols lore: think Hi-5 dancing with Santa, followed by Marina Prior trilling over a baby in the stable.

Prior obviously loves it - this will be her 21st show - and it's a frock-friendly night like few other singing gigs these days. She's been busy with dress fittings for weeks. It's crucial: at Carols, Prior makes an entrance, and it works because the finery aptly heralds the silk she summons from those pipes.

Carols not only works, it thrives, and indeed thrills the city in which the Carols by Candlelight tradition was born in 1937. Other capitals do it too, but Melbourne is the spiritual home. The people love it, and that knowledge weighs on those running the event.

Then there's the fact that its purpose is to raise money for Vision Australia. You don't want to mess this one up. Rita Townsend Booth, a volunteer co-ordinator for Vision Australia, has worked on the show for seven years and drills her teams of volunteer ticket-checkers and candle-sellers to ensure things run smoothly.

Some things can't be controlled - only managed when they wreak havoc. ''It's the weather that we're at the mercy of. But there's nothing we can do. It's one of the only shows that no matter what the weather, the show goes on. No matter what.''

That rings true for Con Kontos, whose family business in Airport West has been making the Carols candles since the 1970s. It's a serious business.

''It's part of Victorian tradition,'' he says. ''The world's gone a bit crazy these days, you can't do this and you can't do that. But they don't have 'carols by torchlight' or 'carols by fluorescent tube'. There's no ring to that, is there?''

No, there is not. The people would rebel, as might Channel Nine, a master at the candle-heavy camera sweep of the Bowl, with every sleeping infant ripe for a bit of baby-in-a-manger symbolism.

It's a Carols staple, as much as the stable with the cattle lowing loud enough to wake a deity. It's what the Carols are: neither kitsch, nor hip, nor grand, nor grating. Sentimental, yes, but that's what we're here for.

And this year even the most cynical might find one Carols debut worthy of a lump in the throat. It hasn't happened often, but Rachael Leahcar will become one of the few visually impaired performers to take the stage.

She's only 18, but The Voice contestant is as steeped in Carols tradition as any veteran. ''It's a huge milestone in my life,'' she told The Sunday Age. ''I remember watching the Carols and thinking, 'Wouldn't it be amazing to be up on that stage?'. It's always been a dream of mine and now it's come true.''

Leahcar will sing Silent Night on a grand stage offering a view performers cherish - looking out on that glorious, flickering field of flames. Though she has less than 10 per cent vision, that moment won't be lost to her.

''I can see light very well. I'll be able to see the candles.''

After a year of painstaking planning by hundreds of people behind the scenes, that's what this night always comes down to: a moment bobbing into Carols memory across a garden of light. And Humphrey, waving silently from a golf buggy.